My Blog

"I have a dream...

I have a dream that one day little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today."

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Not that it matters much to me. Don't get me wrong, either - MLK was indeed a great man who had a great dream of equality among all races and creeds. He is a man who dearly deserves being remembered. However admirable the man is, the holiday itself isn't all that great because I'm not in school and I don't work at a bank or post office. Such is life.

I want to start these impressions by apologizing - it's been a busy holiday season for us here at Two Assholes. Wydren has only recently come back from his Jamaican Honeymoon, I've been busy playing World of Warcraft getting my brother to level 60, work (of course) and, on top of all that, I've had to pull myself away from my post-holiday orgy of games/gifts to write for the site. Such is life.

In any case, Animal Crossing: Wild World is the much anticipated sequel to the platinum selling Animal Crossing for Nintendo Gamecube. Having never played the first game, I was expecting quite a lot out of this newest offering, which amongh other things, offers a new online play option the original lacked.

Wild World is a game where you make your own unique place in a town full of, as you may have guessed, animals. The game itself is completely open-ended: you do in your town as you please any time you like. That simple-but-accurate description does not in any way do the game justice. There are tons of things to do in your town and I'm personally discovering more all the time. You can collect furniture sets for your house, farm money, work on your gardening skills, horn in on your town's horticulture by planting different fruit trees, collect a variety of art, fossils, bugs and fish for the town museam, interact with the town's beastly residents, write letters, make posts on the town message board... the possibilites in Animal Crossing are limitless and tantalizing. This is one of the few 'true' Role Playing Games in existence by merit of it's freeform play style.

Nintendo has been making a name for themselves lately with all sorts of showcases for the Nintendo DS's unique technology. Wild World takes RPG interfaces and completely turns them around for play using the DS's touch screen. You can interact with the game exclusively using the touch screen, making operations like equipping shovels and selling items a breeze. It's great to be able to play a game that's completely unbound from the typical controller set up that's used for console RPGs.

Make no mistake though, this is a game that's primarily about getting stuff. There are various ways the game measures your progress in this regard. For example, if there are too few trees in your town (or too many), the town's residents will submit compliments or complaints to the Town Hall. Likewise, weekly H.R.A. mails inform you of your interior decorating ability via a score. The museam curator, Blathers the Owl, will also inform you when your museam's popularity increases. And, of course, the size of your bank account is always a good way to measure your progress in any RPG.

The most interesting thing about Animal Crossing is the way your town evolves it's own culture. The residents gossip about each other, show you each other's (and yours!) letters, and will often ask you to complete simple tasks like deliveries or to choose a nickname for yourself. These changes compound on top of each other over time, combining to form a truly unique little villiage of your own.

I'll write a full review for Animal Crossing: Wild World soon, but my initial recommedation stands as a game you have to try at least once before you die.